Feeling Big, Feeling Small

I love this book. We all know that people want to feel powerful and in control of the world around them. Feeling big is having ambition, grit, and high self-esteem. Feeling small is to feel inferior, humiliated, and weak. Our culture celebrates feeling big and our psychological science anoints it as central to human nature. In their insightful and fascinating book, Moskalenko and Kruglanski tell us a different story. They introduce us to the essential benefits of feeling small—how it underlies our experiences of wonder and being part of a greater whole. It is a must-read for all of us who want to understand what motivates our life choices and what we can do to improve them.

E. Tory Higgins, Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology and Business, and Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. He is the author of Shared Reality.

Sophia Moskalenko and Arie Kruglanski offer a compelling framework for understanding human flourishing, rooted in the interplay between two opposing mental states: “Bigness” and “Smallness.” Building on recent psychological research, and using personal stories and cultural references, they illuminate how we constantly switch between feeling significant and humbled. In a society that disproportionately emphasizes Bigness, this book restores the psychological value of Smallness. I was struck by the depth and breadth of their analysis and the elegance of their writing. This book is about love, war, spirituality, science, culture, and so much more. It tells us that flourishing requires embracing both states: learning to feel and value both being big and small.

Ayelet Fishbach, Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.

This breathtaking and scholarly tour of our yearning for significance and wonder illuminates how our inclinations for the big and the vast and the small and the humble i are at the heart of what is most human -- art, religion, politics, morality, and our conscious lives. This wonderful book offers fresh insights into struggles of our times, and offers deep ideas and a blueprint for progress.

Dacher Keltner, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Director, Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory Faculty Director, Greater Good Science Center. Chief Scientific Advisor, Hume AI, Author of Awe.